This site introduces the hobby of treasure and scavenger hunting to the global community. The site is arranged by subjects of interest in order to create labyrinths of exciting puzzles, quests, and learning. [link removed] edit: The link is at the end.

Buried Keys is a website introducing the hobby of exploring and digging for buried online treasure. The site is arranged by subjects of interest in order to create labyrinths of exciting puzzles, quests, and learning that suits your interests. You will begin each new adventure by going to the Topic you are interested in and choosing a Dig. New Digs will have unclaimed treasure keys. Each Dig question reveals a part of the key to the buried treasure. You may compete with other treasure hunters for the keys or you may visit older Digs that may no longer have prizes, but are still fun! The Topics, Digs, keys, and rewards are solely at the discretion of the site owner. There is no fee for participation. Each Dig is a winner-take-all contest. There are no guarantees of any rewards since others are competing with you, but that never stopped true treasure hunters!

PrizesThe rewards for playing Buried Keys are the keys to unlock a cryptographic treasure in the form of Bitcoin. These Bitcoin can be stored in your own treasure chest or spent to buy things at many online sites. It is recommended that you familiarize yourself with Bitcoin and how to create a wallet. There are many programs you may download as source code that you can compile yourself or you may simply trust the program providers and download them to use right away. There are also several online wallets that can be used, but it is not advisable to store very much at one time nor any for very long. They are available as many computer and smartphone versions, and they should all work pretty well for this website.

Once you complete all the digs for each buried key, you will enter them in order into a specialized key generator of that series of words. The public part of the key must match the public key presented on the dig page. The private key will then be entered by you importing it into your Bitcoin program, app, or online wallet. You will then, as soon as you are able to, spend that amount to a secure Bitcoin address. After the Bitcoin is sent to your own private address, it is advisable to delete the address imported by you or else someone else may solve the dig after you and get a copy of the keys for themselves and steal your treasure out from under your nose! It is also possible that you may get the keys yourself right after someone else and they are already spent. This is all about competition.

This process is somewhat complex at the moment. If you are not familiar with how Bitcoin works, it is advisable to get assistance from someone that has expertice with Bitcoin.

Once you have all the answers that you think are correct, it's time to get your Bitcoin.

Get BitcoinIt would be a good idea to get to understand this process before playing Buried Keys competitively. This is a multi-step process for now, but soon it should be much simpler. These step-by-step instructions should suffice in the meantime. First of all, you will need to have all your Dig questions in order. You will then need a way to type all of them into a special kind of Private Key generator. There are several. One of the easiest is to use BitAddress. This is a Java program that can even run offline if you want to disconnect from the internet to use it. You will then go to the Wallet Details tab and type in (or copy/paste) each word in your answers with one space between them into the Enter Private Key box. They are case sensitive and can only be letters and numbers. Example: altimeter vegetarian chocolate periwinkle Yosemite juniper Jupiter George Washington

By pressing the View Details button and then OK you would get a Bitcoin Address (it starts with a 1) that should match the Bitcoin Address with the Dig. In this case the Bitcoin Address is 1thRWQZVUqBFcyGhBkHM2nS29e5Sj7gb1 along with a corresponding QR code. If that matches the Bitcoin Address for the Dig, then you look for the Private Key (starts with a 5 and is base58). In this case it is 5KSxXCvfEjujLKCya8H7YHepGCBiWmiU6cvkkfH7W4H16VvGApd.

Once you have your Private Key, you can then unlock the treasure, but you will need to use it quickly before someone else also finds the key and removes the treasure before you do!

Once you have your Private Key, there are several ways to redeem it for Bitcoin. Probably the easiest is to use an online wallet. It is not recommended to use online wallets for large amounts. The reason is that you are storing money on someone's server that offers no insurance against loss from accident or theft. For Buried Keys, they should be fine for short term storage. The first one recommended is MtGox. You will need to set up an account that requires only a username, password, and a valid email address. Once your account is active there is a section where you can import your Private Key and acquire Bitcoin. MtGox will automatically secure your imported Bitcoin so you don't have to worry about someone stealing it.

Another online wallet is My Wallet where you can then go into the import section (after acknowledging that it is an advanced feature) and import your Private Key. Once the address is verified after up to a, you will need to send the Bitcoin from that address to another address. Either send it to another one on My Wallet or anywhere else that has a secure address for which no one else has a key. You will then need to click the far right archive button next to your newly imported key.

There are also downloadable Bitcoin clients for computers and smartphones that have much of this functionality too. Once you have your Bitcoin, these are also great ways to start spending Bitcoin!http://sites.google.com/site/buriedkeys/

Any significantly advanced cryptocurrency is indistinguishable from Ponzi Tulips.

I might also suggest a brain-dead bulletpoint guide as to what to do. All I can figure from my brief overview of the site (which is what most people will probably do) was that there are a list of questions that I need to answer, but I can't really tell what to do with the answers... the 'How to Play' section needs to be explained more clearly and not as a big blob of text. Especially, it doesn't seem to explain what to do with your answers to each part of the dig.

But aside from that, cool idea. If you could facilitate 'user generated digs' that would be awesome.

edit:ok it's explained by the link on 'buried treasure'. I might suggest making that a bit more explicit and also including it as part of the 'how to play' section.

I might also suggest a brain-dead bulletpoint guide as to what to do. All I can figure from my brief overview of the site (which is what most people will probably do) was that there are a list of questions that I need to answer, but I can't really tell what to do with the answers... the 'How to Play' section needs to be explained more clearly and not as a big blob of text. Especially, it doesn't seem to explain what to do with your answers to each part of the dig.

But aside from that, cool idea. If you could facilitate 'user generated digs' that would be awesome.

edit:ok it's explained by the link on 'buried treasure'. I might suggest making that a bit more explicit and also including it as part of the 'how to play' section.

Thanks. I am working with a Swedish youtube veteran who will be explaining the game in a short video. I will add graphics to the video to make it clearer. She should make the game more interesting. As far as the game being a list of questions, yeah that's all the skills I have for now. I have ideas for other sorts of games with the same "buried keys" theme. This has a lot of evolving to do.

Any significantly advanced cryptocurrency is indistinguishable from Ponzi Tulips.

It is impossible because it is subject to interpretation (or arcane knowledge and wording that only you can know the answer to). I just tried to add my generated key for the Bible 1a ones, after being properly encoded to base58 starting with a '5', without success. You'd be better off providing an ISBN of a NY Times best seller, and listing page, line, and word to search for, which would only require basic counting, not mind-reading.

The answers may be a little tricky, but they make sense. They are spelled as they appear in KJV 1611. Buried keys is intended to be a team game if/when the project gets finished and sponsors are found. It was inspired by http://90fmtrivia.org/.

Any significantly advanced cryptocurrency is indistinguishable from Ponzi Tulips.

The answers may be a little tricky, but they make sense. They are spelled as they appear in KJV 1611

Just tried using a KJV 1611 word search and it's not showing me where you got the questions from. I only had a chance looking at other versions. You shouldn't have to hold a doctorate in theology or discuss this amongst your group at a monastery or convent...

The answers may be a little tricky, but they make sense. They are spelled as they appear in KJV 1611

Just tried using a KJV 1611 word search and it's not showing me where you got the questions from. I only had a chance looking at other versions. You shouldn't have to hold a doctorate in theology or discuss this amongst your group at a monastery or convent...

The rules don't say that that the questions must come from KJV 1611, only the answers do. Search engines probably won't help much, but a doctorate in theology might. There are other puzzles on the website that are not bible related. I hope to have more in the near future as the site develops. Thanks for playing!

Any significantly advanced cryptocurrency is indistinguishable from Ponzi Tulips.

Do the answers comprise a private key somehow? Or do they just need to be submitted to you to be verified as accurate?EDIT: I just re-read the OP, so I guess the answers do need to make a private key. Beats me where to get started though.

For the Bible section, a little Googling and theological know-how has gotten me about 10 answers that I am fairly certain are correct, 3 more that are uncertain, and 2 that I have not yet figured out.

On the Bible dig: I've got a collection of possible answers and some pretty solid references to back them up, but can't seem to find the key. If anyone else who is close would like to pool answers and see if we can solve it together, that might be interesting (assuming cbeast is OK with it.)

Although I'll trust anyone, I'm curious if there's some cool crypto we can use to share answers without having the completely trust each other...

Kudos on the site. It has the potential to introduce a lot of new people to bitcoins.

I have a couple of suggestions.

No matter how creative you are, you will eventually run out of puzzles. I suggest you set it up so that users can submit their own puzzles (become puzzle masters). Encourage users to donate to the prize money and to tip the puzzle masters. Maybe have a minimum prize before you are willing to post a puzzle submission, and when the prize is taken, you would take the puzzle down, or move it to the completed puzzles section. Incorporate a leader board for the puzzle masters, so that people that submit really hard puzzles get recognition.

Another handy tool would be to incorporate the bitaddress.org and blockexplorer functionality into the site, so people don't have to leave the page to check their answers or see the prize total.